Mr. Scot

Ouch. Sorry to hear...

That's okay. The network did too

That was the issue I had as well...

The Hall of Fame Game (Preseason One) will be played tonight between the Jets and the Browns. It's not Panthers football, it's not regular season football, it probably won't even be good football, but it is NFL football...and I'm ready for it. The last few seasons left a really bad taste in my mouth, one that made it very tough to get excited for the start of the next season. But the changes made to the team this past offseason have excised those bad feelings. My expectations for this year aren't super high, but getting better and looking like an actual professional football team would be a huge improvement over the most recent whatever you want to call it. Anything beyond that is gravy. Maybe I'm just ready to be hurt again like Steve Carell, but I'm genuinely hyped up and anxious to get things started. I haven't been able to say that for a few years now. Feels good

Well, I mean...

Not used to hearing that last phrase, but I like it.

The ten years I played it was always full pads and two-a-days in the July/August heat. There's lots of things I miss about football, but that ain't one of em

Damn

Plus we don't play at night much. Guys would be gassed halfway through the first quarter of week one.

Feeling genuinely optimistic rather than just repeating the annual ritual of hoping and praying that the team is better than you think they are?

It can if they've already shown some actual quarterbacking ability and at least a collegiate level of brain power, but this idea that you can just take a raw athlete and train him to have pro level quarterbacking skills (accuracy, especially) is bound to fail way more often than it works.

And Bill Polian as GM...

It's never been the injuries. The whispers that he hasn't been able to pick up the offense have been around forever. And despite denials from the 49ers, they haven't gone away. If anything, they've gotten louder. I've said before that Lance is an example of why the whole "take the athlete and coach him to be a quarterback" approach isn't a safe practice. In this case, it looks like it's turning out to be a massive error.

I wouldn't say that I agree with Jim Irsay (ever) but Taylor strikes me as the kind of guy who's going to have a really strong season or two but also a very short shelf life due to his style of play. I probably wouldn't trade for him.

Irsay... Not going over well

Meanwhile in San Francisco...

Okay, that's funny

I've said before, and still say, that Mike Shula did a good job as Newton's quarterback coach. His being promoted to OC was a huge mistake, though.

I always question whether he means anything he says. The whole "7 year plan" thing was probably just to an excuse for how poorly he was doing in the first couple of seasons. He just spouts whatever bullsh-t he thinks people will buy Agree on this

For our part, I know the word was that Corral was McAdoo's pick.